Badass Damsel
by Majickal
Summary: Being a badass doesn't actually require you to kick some. Or five times M'gann saved her team and one time they saved her.
1. RobinComfort

(So my general impression is that M'gann is an empath, since she could sense the Sphere's pain and flipped out both times she felt Superboy cry out without even being connected to him. Anyhoo, SB/R/M!cuddlepile.)

1. Robin's screams are guttural in nature. His face stretches grotesquely as he squirms in Superboy's arms. He's wiry and Superboy's scared that if he squeezes too hard he'll snap the Boy Wonder in half.

"NO! NO! DON'T TAKE ME AWAY FROM THEM! HELP ME! SOMEBODY HELP!"

It's just M'gann, Superboy, and Robin. The others have chased after Scarecrow, seeking retribution for the fear toxin.

The only reason M'gann's here is because she can't escape the pain.

She's rooted to the spot, overcome with emotion being pushed onto her. The memories (_those are_ memories, _aren't they? So strong so bright_) are never ending and sometimes she'll see a horror fantasy of Robin's darkest fears (_please don't leave me, please don't leave me – Bruce !_).

Superboy yells something at her. She doesn't realize she's crying.

She grabs Robin's face, pulling him into her arms, and she pushes into his mind.

It hurts more in his head and she swims until she reaches the edge of terror and jumps off (_take a leap of - _) Here it's darker. But it's quiet, a sanctuary where the screams are whispers. She feels around in the dark until she finds happiness.

They're memories of colorful cloth, flying the air above smiles, sawdust covered knees, laughter echoing in a trailer. There are hugs and kisses and there's love enough to make a heart burst; and she takes as much as she can into her arms and flies back up into the cacophonic void.

She covers up lifeless bodies with sunflower fields passed by in the early summer, empty silence is replaced with a mother's soothing words to a feverish child.

The memories she finds are short and faded (_but glowingglowing_) but they repeat on never ending loops. There isn't much, but she manages to covers up the corners and sews up the seams until she creates a ball of love and home –

She opens her eyes and Robin's sitting demurely in her lap, face planted in the crook of her neck with her arms wrapped around him. Superboy has his arms around her, around them.

Everything's going to be fine.


	2. Kid FlashCare

2. Wally's limp in Kaldur's arms and it scares her. It scares them all, really. Wally isn't moving and that's _wrong_ because he's never still. He vibrates and fidgets and moves at the speed of sound _ohgodshe's_ rambling.

_Focus, M'gann!_

She's flying erratically around the kitchen. She's moving too fast to stop herself from crashing into cupboards.

_His blood sugar's low, right? So he needs sugar...water?_

She wants to hit herself, she really does, and go Hello, Megan! but there's really no time for that posturing. She doesn't know what humans need to survive except food, water, shelter…

_I don't know, I don't know_

She gather's up tomatoes, apples, bananas, and wonders if Wally even has enough energy to chew them.

_Maybe the sugar water's the safest way to go. If he drinks enough, he could quickly digest it, and there'll be enough energy - _

A drink. Something clicks and her head whips around to the blender sitting pristinely on the counter.

_I saw this in a movie, once..._

She cleans the tomatoes and cuts them up with the apples ad she peels the banans and everything goes in the blender with half a jar of pickles and eggs and strawberries and celery and broccoli...

"M'GANN!"

The funky colored liquid sloshed dangerously when she came to a stop before them. Wally is propped up against Kaldur's chest with his mask pulled back. His eyes are closed.

"Wally? Wally! Wake up, M'gann's here. Come on, don't you want to see M'gann?" Robin pleads.

Wally's so pale you can see each individual freckle.

"Is he breathing?"

"Barely," Kaldur answers. He gestures to her. "Give it to him."

She hopes to everything that she knows exists and doesn't that Wally doesn't choke on it, but Wally's saved enough strength for this that it goes down slowly without a hitch.

And then -

nothing.

Then he opens his eyes.

"Hey, beautiful. Are those tears for your favorite teammate?"

She relaxes her muscles (_oh god, so tight, I can't believe_) and laughs (but, really, it just sounds like sobbing).

Artemis reacts next and punches him.

"I thought we told you to pace yourself."

"OW! If we stuck with the plan…there wasn't enough time to pull it through!"

"Why would you do that? You were low on energy coming into the fight."

"There's no point in winning a fight by yourself if you're going to be a martyr, Wally."

M'gann just savors the feeling.


	3. AqualadConcern

(I've taken liberties with Miss M's powers. LOTS of liberties. Like, Dresden-Files-lifted liberties.)

3. _Aqualad!_

M'gann flew down hallways, reaching out as far as her range could take her.

_Aqualad, respond!_

"M'gann, we've got three minutes left," Wally shouted from behind, skidding to a stop in front of her. "I've searched the sublevels, but I don't know about the secret passages."

_Don't panic don't panic. Aqualad would say Don't Panic._

"Okay, okay, I think I've got an idea, but I need you to remove everyone from the building."

Wally smiled, all bravado. "Already done, beautiful."

"And I need you to get out."

The mask came down. "M'gann, the buildings gonna go in less than three minutes -"

"Then I need you to let me concentrate!"

He reeled back in surprise at her sudden aggression, the disappeared in a blur of yellow and red.

She meditates where she is and reaches out her conciousness.

She feels the floor, the windows, and doorways. She can feel the air currents in the vents circulating and changing direction as the automated system turns on. Her mind outlines the bomb on the lobby floor.

But she doesn't See these things. Instead, she Sees old memories and feelings tied to rooms. She Sees the monotony of the upper floors, the front for the company. She can See the anxiety in front of the computers as the clock ticks down to deadline (_ticktick…boom!_), the passion in supply closets when the lust becomes too much, the aggression and calm collectedness in the boardrooms.

Below, in the basement levels she can See the room they had put her in, the table that they strapped her down in that arched into her pain, the room trembles and quakes for bloodlust. The room is dark and there are many others like it. (_Superboy's rage, Artemis' cunning, Wally's anxiety, Robin's…_)

The hallways close in on her mind. It's grown its own conciousness and they want to keep the boy they've hidden away in the depths.

She squeezes past and she Sees this  
small  
_flickering_  
Light in the darkness and it feels warm but it makes her feel calm and it cools her down like a wave on the ocean surface and she reaches out to grab it.

Twenty levels of flooring are torn out from under her and she dives down.


	4. ArtemisFaith

4. The witch beats against her walls. "Take it down! Take it down or let her go!" She screams in rage and M'gann pushes the walls outward and the witch tumbles out of her mind.

M'gann looks out into the world and patches up the psionic shields she put on Artemis.

Artemis, battered and bruised, is being held up on the wall by her neck, courtesy of her father.

"She's a traitor, you know." The Sportsmaster is talking to M'gann, looking at Artemis.

M'gann, if she wasn't being attacked, would point out that Artemis hadn't betrayed them.

Artemis hadn't willingly gone to him. In fact, he kidnapped her at the arcade where she and M'gann were trying to win all the cat plushies in the claw machine.

(_YesYes…Gah! Put more quarters in, hurry!_)

The witch slipped through a crack and M'gann slaps her backwards.

And the reason _why_ the Sportsmaster was using a telepathic witch was so that they could force League secrets out of her. (_Torturing would be useless. I made sure of that at an early age._)

M'gann fires a few psionic blasts and shuts the witch out.

Because if Artemis _was_ a traitor, she would have told him everything of her own volition already after they visited the space station. (_Still treating us like sidekicks, the hell?_)

She wouldn't have fought her father.

skritch skritch skritch (_she's clawing at the walls LET HER GO LET HER GO_)

She wouldn't have made plans for the future.

(_Guess who found out Kaldur's birthdayyyyy? Little Mermaid theme, y/n?_ :D)

She wouldn't have tried so hard

(_GET OUT OF MY MIND_)

to prove that she wasn't a replacement.

repair patch psionic blasts

That and M'gann can feel through the psionic shield around Artemis' mind (_the rushing thoughts, the fear, the concern, the worry, the protective fury_).

You can't fake emotions like that, M'gann knows.

_Hey, I've seen enough shows to know what a traitor looks like, and let me tell you something: _

You suck at this.

She packs up her love and faith and good memories, throws them at Artemis so that it hits her head on and that there's no way to mistake it, and sends that she-devil packing.

(_one day, we'll look back on this, laugh awkwardly, and quickly change the subject_)


	5. SuperboyNotice

The tide was coming in, nearly five feet away from Superboy's shoeless feet. Over the shushing water, the sun hung reluctantly, burning hot, afraid to let go of the world.

Superboy watched the horizon from his spot on the small sand cliff that marked the farthest the tide came in and he contemplated if he should stay to feel the water run over his sandy toes (if the sun didn't leave first.)

Somewhere off in the distance, someone was lighting a bonfire. Island music was playing, dancing feet shuffling in the sand, happy voices murmuring.

"_H'talla chak'n mall'nah…_"

Superboy turned his head slightly to look at a slumbering M'gann who was not only hogging the beach towel she had brought with them, but had curled around the large twine basked filled with green coconuts they had collected earlier that afternoon.

"_Hirm… Nral…_"

He could hear drunken tourists singing "Stand by me."

Water.

Trees.

Footsteps…

"Superboy?"

The clone looked up to see Kaldur blocking the view, dripping from the sea, a perplexed look on his face.

"…M'gann needed coconuts," he explained after he realized that he was supposed to say something.

Kaldur looked between the two, then the coconuts, then to Superboy.

"She needed that many? Could she have just gone to the store."

"She just said that she needed the green ones. They taste better."

Kaldur nodded absently, shifting his weight to see the sun over his shoulder. "It's late. We should get her back to base."

A few weeks ago, Superboy would have said no. The trip back might have woken her, and she seemed to be having a nice dream. Superboy could watch the sunset on this island of Oahu.

But saying no would give Kaldur the wrong impression.

He knows this now.

He grunts, standing up for the first time in hours, and he realizes just how tired he feels.

So Kaldur puts the weight of the basket on his shoulder and Superboy wraps a murmuring M'gann in her towel and pulls her to his chest, arms behind her back and neck.

They both walked to an inconspicuous hut in the shade of some trees. (Property in the name of a JL member who installed a zeta-beam transport for easy access to Hawaii.)

"So you tow only came for these?" Kaldur asked, breaking the amiable silence to refer to the basket.

"I only came because she asked me too." It was true. It never occurred to Superboy that he had the choice and permission to leave the mountain. That he didn't have to stay in the silence. That he didn't have to continuously wait for someone to notice him or remembered that he existed.

His team remembered him more than anyone.

M'gann always remembered him.

"You should come here to Hawaii more often. There's a cove on the next island that you should see. It has a path that leads up to this cliff with a wonderful view to the sky. You would enjoy it."

M'gann muttered something that sounded vaguely English and twisted in his arms.

"Hmm. Yeah."


	6. MgannOpen

So this came out pretty vague, but I think it's because I don't believe the team can save M'gann from her evil future (if she's lying about the status of White Martian's being second class citizens).

Idk, I could've gone the easy route and had them save her from her guilt.

* * *

There is only one thing we have in common with White Martians, her teachers had told her. We were made to fear fire.

A long time ago, twice the age of the birth of man, M'gann was told again and again, the Green and White Martians were the same race, the Burning. The Burnings were ruthless, violent, terrible creatures. They were belligerent to all creatures, even to each other-said her teachers solemnly. Their asexual reproduction, the fire, the _burning_, was the backbone to their belief.

The Guardians of the Universe feared the raw power and intensity the Burning Martians held within themselves.

This cannot continue, they must have said amongst themselves. So they went about their plan of weakening the Burnings.

(M'gann's teachers always phrased it "Burnings were primitive, evil beings. The Guardians civilized us.")

The Guardians split the Martians into two genetically different races, Green and White. They were weaker than Burnings, although with most of the same powers, telepathy, shifting, etc. But the two races were _different_ after the split, her teachers insisted. And they made them fear fire so that they would never reach their true, terrible potential.

The Green Martians are peaceful philosophers. Their thoughts never stray, telepathic abilities are honed. If they fight, it is with intelligence.

White Martians are…_raw_. Their emotions are scattered, bright and shining (and _burning_). They scream their thoughts to the stars, they fight ruthlessly

her teachers said.

M'gann was one of the best student her teachers had ever seen and she is the champion of her entire world.

M'gann finds humans utterly fascinating.

When her Uncle J'onn shows her Earth through their cable, she immediately notices that she cannot hear their thoughts.

Her entire world stops turning for a moment. She's never heard such silence before. Even Green Martians, who only keep few constant connections, do not keep this quiet.

There's always some form of noise, a whisper of an idea, the brief spark of emotion.

She wonders how humans can communicate so easily. She knows that humans lie, sometimes as a joke, sometimes seriously. They can lie to tease, to hide, to hurt, to comfort.

It's difficult for Martians to lie, your thoughts seen by all. M'gann has enough trouble keeping things private.

(She realizes later that humans _can_ share hints of thoughts and feelings, willingly or not. It's all facial expressions, her uncle points out, showing her the same face, skin pulled at different angles in each picture. Their minds are isolated, but they show their hearts.)

Another thing that fascinates her: their labels for different skin color.

Or more specifically, white.

To her, they are pink, fleshy things.

Her Uncle tells her the correct term is Caucasian.

When she comes to Earth, she is overwhelmed by the thoughts of humans. It is the first difference between Earth and television.

The barrage of thoughts get worse when she enters the mountain and meets the boys that will be her teammates.

The thoughts become so loud, she keeps quiet (or maybe she's afraid of speaking out loud. She's rarely had to do it before.)

So many thoughts and she reaches out for the first quiet thing, the boy in the black shirt. She's surprised, his thoughts are…compact, tightly kept, like he's scared of what's what. If she reaches to far, she'll notice that it's a jumbled mess, heaps of data and numbers and facts and dates. (What does he need with all of that?)

There's nothing personal within him, save for fear, doubt, curiosity, and

He looks at her and there's no word for that quiet thing he holds in his head. It's…_good_. It's a good feeling.

She smiles and says, "I like your shirt."

She mistakes Aqualad-Kaldur-as human.

He laughs kindly, corrects her ("I'm only _half_ human.") and shows her the webbing between his fingers and the closed gills on his neck.

She's afraid to touch his gills, thinking it might be rude. She touches the palm of his hand, turning it over, utterly fascinated.

She asks him what kind of stories they have where he's from. How do they tell them? Humans tell their stories through images on a screen or through written word. They cannot tell stories like Martians can, where emotions can be pinned down and named.

Humans, for all their books and poems, cannot name their feelings sometimes.

And maybe that's why she likes it. That way of describing something without naming it. You can convey an emotion and have someone else make it their own to understand.

Martians push their feelings on to others, with no misunderstanding.

He brings back a tablet from his home, where the images move and transform and it's all very different from human television, and gives her a story his mother used to tell him.

(She wants to ask for that story again.)

When Artemis died in the simulation, something started scratching at the back of her head.

No.

Not scratching.

It's a soft pain, nearly a throb, not really a thrum.

An echo of a burn.

"How…"

She jumps at the sound of someone else's voice.

It's a few days after the failed simulation. They've been together nearly everyday, but they don't talk.

It's Robin, slumped over the island counter, mouth pulled down into a soft frown. He's staring at the oven.

"How can you bake if you're afraid of fire?" he asks. "Like, does the heat bother you?"

He doesn't sound like he _needs_ an answer. He-they, with all their eyes on her now-just want a reprieve from their thoughts.

She looks down to the cookie dough arranged haphazardly on the sheet.

She opens the oven with her mind, puts the tray in too, and closes the door.

"I don't have to be bothered by it," she says.

And they're silent once more.

There's a few more close calls, a few more tears, a little more fear, and none of them are training simulations.

The scratching turns into a slow burn.

Sometimes, when Megan feels lonely or worried, she reaches out and touches her teammates minds, just to feel.

It's a comfort to know they're there.

(She wonders how they deal with loneliness.)

Lex Luthor takes control of Conner (a program ingrained in him during his CADMUS days) and that slow burn ignites.

She no longer fears.

They were wrong about Burning Martians feeling nothing.

They can feel everything, they are connected to everyone, feel the pain the fear the sadness the _rage_

Of her team. Her friends. Her family.

The thing is, a Burning Martian's motives and desires aren't affected by these things.

They just want to watch everything burn.

Conner's face is buried in the plane of Megan's stomach, choking and shaking, whispering "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. Please. _Please."_

Robin stands above them, his smile shaky and relieved as he tells Megan, "Artemis is pissed about her hair, y'know."

She visits Kaldur before he's taken down to Atlantis for treatment. (She holds back tears, avoids looking at the burn scar on his hand.)

"Thank you," she chokes out, trying to smile. She's relieved, so relieved that they're okay. That they're still with her. Artemis wasn't that mad about her hair, cropped so short not only by the flames but by Wally's poor barber skills. "Thank you for finding me."

And still loving me. Accepting me.

He smiles and takes her hand in his scarred one and squeezes.

"Can…Can you please tell me that story again? The first one I asked you for?"

His voice is a little hoarse, but he tells them all a good story anyway.


End file.
